Disasters

"Scorched by days of unrelenting wildfires, parts of southeast Australia are facing 'catastrophic fire danger.' On Monday, officials declared a state of emergency for all of New South Wales, the country's most populous state."

"Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide. Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium."

“The U.S. economy has experienced more than $500 billion in direct losses over the last five years due to climate and weather-related events,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Executive Vice President Kevin Stiroh told a risk forum on Thursday at the bank."

"On a cold morning last March, Kenny Angel got a frantic knock on his door. Two workers from a utility company in northern Nebraska had come with a stark warning: Get out of your house. ...Minutes later, the dam came crashing down, unleashing a wave of water carrying ice chunks the size of cars. Angel’s home was wiped away; his body was never found."

"When officials at a government weather forecasting office assured Alabama residents that a September hurricane would not hit their state, they did not intend to contradict President Trump’s insistence that it would, according to newly disclosed documents."

"In the wake of two years of devastating wildfires in California, Wall Street is incorporating a new risk metric when evaluating companies: climate resiliency. Investors, analysts, research firms and companies are putting more emphasis on how climate issues ranging from rising sea levels to record heatwaves will affect profits and revenues in the United States and what companies are doing to address those risks."

"Twenty-two mayors, as well as other city leaders, from across Northern California are behind a bold proposal to turn the region’s troubled Pacific Gas & Electric into a publicly owned cooperative."

"President Donald Trump is scorching the facts about California’s wildfires. The president in recent tweets blamed California and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for the fires because of state forest management practices and said California’s fires were too expensive and worse than in other states. In fact, the fires were not raging mostly in forests. The bulk of California’s forests are also federally managed, and other parts of the U.S. are burning even more."